Game
Immortal Sins
6 years ago

What's coming for Immortal Sins?


Hey there! It’s been a while talking about the game’s progress. This post will be mainly talking about some technical stuff, but there will be a bit about the state of the story.

New build

Yeah… I’m not really happy that I say this, but I decided to halt the full release of the beta build 20190214 until additional fixes and tweaks are done. I planned to do a full release of it to all mirrors that had the beta version, but after watching HawkZombie’s livestream, I decided to do extra changes before I do a full release (which will promote it to D0.30 Update 2). I know, it feels like I’ve either released it an A/B test of sorts or I released it for Hawk to play it (disclosure: I did ask him to play the demo) but I had the packages for all mirrors ready and I was going to upload the build. Heck, I was uploading the update to the Microsoft Store before he live-streamed.

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In any case, a new build will be available soon. It will have bug fixes and improvements. It won’t address Hawk’s feedback entirely, but hopefully, it will be substantial.

Part 2 of the story when?

Yeah, I’m pretty sure you are waiting for the story to conclude, but at the moment, I keep having writer’s block when I try to continue the story. I was able to write new dialogue (little by little) but it goes pretty slow. At the moment, I want to finish the MV version so I can make it the stable version. I want to finish it, but things at the moment are a bit hazy (especially when the university exams are coming really soon. And there was a big screwup by the management, but I’ll refrain from talking about). And I am switching up how I work on the game since I had times where I burned out.

Game development can be a cruel mistress if you aren’t careful.

Launcher getting a technical upgrade

While I am working on improving the Northbridge Platform as well, there are some details that I can’t address fully without some extra implementation. Due to the nature of the managed code, your computer has to compile the code of the launcher. And while I have turned on Multicore JIT by creating a profile for the launcher, I can still improve it. One of the things I haven’t used is NGEN (Native Image Generator). This pre-compiles the code of the launcher, thus improving significantly the performance. Running a short test shows that it can cut the startup time by about 50%. And it makes the program itself respond faster. Unfortunately, implementing it to all mirrors is rather difficult. The Gamejolt Client version will require the user to run NGEN manually, in order to optimize it. And the Microsoft Store requires some technical know-how to implement it fully. And it can make it a bit complex to ensure that the removal of the game is clean (Microsoft Store aside since it only requires a library to be used). But, a new version of .NET may have a better solution.

If you aren’t aware, Microsoft open-sourced .NET in the form of .NET Core. Its purpose is to have a cross-platform, open-source application platform. I have developed an app that uses .NET Core and a .NET Standard library. In this year, .NET Core 3 will be released. Alongside improvements, it will also allow developers to bring over Windows Presentation Foundation and Windows Forms apps written in .NET Framework over to .NET Core. And it didn’t take too long for me to port my compiler app to this new tech.

So… what does that mean for Immortal Sins, I hear you ask? Well:

  • The Just-In-Time compiler is faster than the one on .NET Framework. It will greatly benefit everyone since I can have a nice, speedy program without doing a hexamagic. I wouldn’t be surprised that there would be an option to make a native app that doesn’t need .NET Core in the future (look for CoreRT).

  • I can have a copy of .NET Core side-by-side. Immortal Sins at the moment needs .NET Framework 4.6.2 in order for Northbridge to work (so it can back up your saves). Although I wanted to use newer versions of it, it does result in a point where I may break compatibility with some operating systems (I found the hard way that 4.6.2 didn’t support Windows 8, only 7, 8.1 and 10). With Core, it almost renders it moot. Plus, it doesn’t require a restart if you don’t have it since it already comes in.
    -Maybe I can finally bring the platform to Linux. Not with the Desktop Pack, mind you (at the moment, there are no plans for official support for a cross-platform UI using WPF or WinForms) but it could make it easier to port it.

The road ahead:

So, for now, the big milestones for the near future are as follows:

  • Polish the MV version so I can promote it to stable.

  • Get new artwork.

  • Port Northbridge to .NET Core.

I can’t think of how to close this, so, thanks for reading this and I’ll see you in the next post.

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